I’ve seen several articles whining about this patch over the past several weeks. They all have the same vague complaints, but the only real tangible and provable one seems to be that some mods break, and Fallout: London was delayed.
I’ve seen claims of crashes and FPS drops, but no actual data or testing to back that up. It seems like a classic case of the Internet circling around and making something into a much bigger deal than reality.
Everyone I’ve seen commenting who has actually tried it themselves seems to have positive feedback. I installed it briefly on the Deck myself to try it out and it seems fine, although I don’t care enough to put in hours of proper testing.
For a long time I’ve argued that there needs to be stronger language differences between physiological addiction and psychological addiction, especially in non-academic discourse. Academic papers usually define their terms pretty well, and often use terms like “habit forming” or “dependency” instead of addiction.
A lot of work has been done to remove the stigma of addiction to shift the blame from the individual to the product, and I have no objections at all to that for physiological addiction. Nicotine, alcohol, opioids, etc.
The problem is that zealots have co-opted that model to try to ban anything they don’t want other people to be able to enjoy. Comic books, television, videogames, marijuana, pornography- all of these have had the word “addiction” attached in news media without solid scientific evidence of physiological addiction. At the same time, you can find case studies of individuals with mental health disorders who get addicted to literally anything… I’m not saying there are not individuals who don’t have problems with these things, but a lot of the effort into stigmatizing and restricting these seems to have ulterior motives. It’s parents who don’t want to teach their children about responsibility and discipline. It’s religious zealots trying to push their worldviews on others. It’s large corporations trying to gain market share by attacking competing industries. In some cases like “sex addiction” it’s used to try to excuse or justify criminal behavior and portray abusers as victims. It’s notable that efforts usually go to just banning and shaming these things rather than helping the alleged “victims”. At the same time, efforts at harm reduction for physiological addiction seems to be constantly undermined.
With all of that being said, there is a separate issue that applies to this case- consumer protection. History has clearly demonstrated that without regulation and enforcement, corporations will engage in all manner of activity to screw over every stakeholder (consumers, vendors, employees, lenders, etc) in order to enrich ownership.
Looking at videogames in particular, there are definitely marketing practices and pricing structures that need to be banned. I just hate this idea that “videogames = bad” when the real issue is corporate greed, and a lot of these issues apply to other industries too.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve played through games with it and it’s really great. But there’s a ton of glitches and games that don’t play well. In another 5 or 10 years (hopefully I’ve upgraded my hardware by then) it’ll probably be great. But today it’s reserved for enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering with settings or playing less demanding games.
PS3 is a strong, strong contender for reliability and repairability reasons. You could replace the CMOS battery and hard drive today. You have to jump through hoops to add funds to your wallet, but once you do the store still works for the moment. The last time I looked there were even some decent deals from a couple of publishers.
No memory cards to worry about. The physical discs were expensive enough that people took care of them and are more inclined to sellt hem than toss them: it’s still really easy to find discs on eBay, and they’re new enough and most games have been remastered so they’re usually less than $20. It’s impossible to find Sixaxis or Dualshock 3’s, but fake ones from AliExpress are super cheap and almost identical except for the almost-never-used motion controls. You can also use a lot of USB controllers, or use something like a MayFlash adapter to use just about any controller you want. I think you can pair Dualsense too, though I haven’t tried. If you have original OEM’s, I don’t remember them ever having drift problems. The only real problem with the original controllers would be battery life (you can replace them if you’re handy), USB Mini-B, and how they needed a handshake and could only charge plugged into certain devices or special power supplies (another reason to just use counterfeits).
With a fat model you have full backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2. With the online store you can get a lot of PS1, PS2, and PSP games. Not sure if this counts, but you can do remote play with a PSP too. Some of the online multiplayer probably still works, depending on the game. It has an HDMI out and the old AV out, so you can hook it up to almost any TV with cheap and a sailable cables. You can also load up video and audio files for playback, saving wear on the disc drive. I remember briefly experimenting with using mine as a media server back in the day.
The drawbacks are few. I’m assuming no hacking or modding, so no Nintendo games. No Xbox either, though I don’t think that’s anywhere near as important. A disc drive is always just a matter of time before it fails. The fat model has PS2 compatibility, but also was less reliable, so that’s a trade-off. The digital store is not long for this world. I used to use mine for Netflix, YouTube, HBO, etc and I’m guessing those apps have probably been shut down at this point. You lose out on modern games too. The PS2 and PS5 are both good options too, but I think the PS3 has the edge. If they ever add a PS3 emulator to the PS5, or if the PS5 library grows in general, it could still overtake the PS3 in the future.
If you lean more Nintendo I think the WiiU was better than the switch until they shut the e-shop down, and might still be better if we open this up to modding and hacking. It’s just easier to work with a WiiU because Nintendo stopped caring about protecting it. It’s also better for playing DS and Wii games for example. A ton of Switch games were also released on WiiU, and the Switch’s legacy content is mostly locked behind the online subscription - how long will that be available for? Still has the disc drive issue and can’t play Sony exclusives, but a strong option.
I’m not usually an Xbox guy, but they’re usually the easiest to mod, the emulate things well, and even without modding the Series X is probably the best option for pure backwards-compatibility with a good chunk of the libraries of every Xbox generation ever. The problem is you get neither the Sony nor Nintendo exclusives. And Xbox exclusives really aren’t all that enticing to me. Maybe if you’re into HALO or Gears or Forza Xbox is a more appealing option. The best IP’s Xbox owns are often released on other consoles, like MineCraft. Which is great for the industry, but hurts Xbox’s ranking here.
Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game
Emphasis on “perceived”. In my experience, the vast majority of mods are for things that I would never have asked for or expected from the developer.
Like Thomas the Tank Engine being everywhere. Or the other day I visited a friend and he was playing Civ 6 as Luigi from Mario. Or adding guns to Skyrim. Or adding tons of sexual content.
Should that content just not exist (licensing issues aside)? While I’m grateful to the noble people making and giving away mods for free, if I could start a decent side gig with it I might start making mods myself.
I can’t imagine myself ever buying a mod, but it seems like opening the platform up to allow creators to monetize is better than closing the platform entirely, or relying on the generosity of a few enthusiasts. Seems like this closes a gap on the spectrum from making your own indie game, getting a job as a developer, or using some DIY creator like Dreams.
They usually start out selling for a loss, but Sony reduces costs and scales production so they’re usually profitable (or at least even) after a couple of years. As far as I can tell the PS3 took the longest, releasing in 2006 and not breaking even until 2010, still 3 years before the PS4 launched.
I’m looking forward to the ward between factions posting the two quotes in comments sections every time a game gets delayed for the next several decades
I don’t mind older games getting love on new platforms. But… This is already a late PS4 game with a PS5 enhancement.
Maybe it’s something as simple as just a physical PS5-only version? I have not seen any “Greatest Hits” reprints of PS5 games yet. Usually they start doing that ~2 years after a console release, so it’s past due for the PS5. So my speculation would be that they are going to announce that at the game awards, and it’s going to include some PS5 reprints of other PS4 games with PS5 enhancement. Maybe Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War (2018), etc.
If this inolvrs putting in serious dev work to remake a 3 year old game, I’d have to question whether those resources would have been better spent elsewhere. Heck, even another, older, Naughty Dog game. The Crash N Sane and Spyro Reignited trilogies were pretty successful endeavors from Activision, and Sony has Bluepoiny just for doing that kind of stuff. Where are the Jak and Daxter remakes? Ratchet and Clank 1 was kind-of remade-ish to go along with the movie release back in 2016, but where are the rest of the R&C re-makes? They did Shadow of the Colossus: where is ICO?
I’ll say that fewer console exclusives is for the better.
Maybe my issue is just how console gaming has changed, and how all 3 companies have screwed consumers.
If I buy Stray on PS5, will I still be able to play it 10 years from now? 20 years from now? Will the PS6 and 7 be able to play PS5 games? Does it matter if I have the physical or digital version? Am I going to be able to rip and emulate PS5 games on a PC at any point? Once my PS3 dies, I lose my digital games and at the mercy of the emulation community to play my physical games. Once my 3DS dies… It’s all gone, and piracy will be the only way to play the games I paid for.
I already bought Stray on Steam. It’s not a guarantee, but I like my odds better there.
I bought my PS5 expecting that there would be some great exclusives there eventually, and that even the ones with PC versions would be better on PS5 (at least at launch and while I’m still rocking an RX580). But all Naughty Dog has done is remakes so far. I love Insomniac, but I’m not a Marvel fan and I miss their more creative work.
The biggest use I’ve gotten from the PS5 has been using the DualSense in PS4 games because I don’t like the DS4.
If PSVR2 was PC compatible I probably would have bought it by now.
If it has a better library I’d be at least considering it. I’d like to play Horizon, but that’s not worth spending over $500 for. Gran Turismo 7 would be intriguing (both VR and regular) if it didn’t have micro-transactions.
Honestly the library issue kind of applies to the whole console. I kind of understand that the pandemic led to more cross-gen games, and multi-platform games are good for the industry as a whole. But I’m still not seeing a lot of reasons to buy a PS5 on this list. The list disregards PC versions, which I kind of get because Sony is publishing AAA games on PC and you often need to spend 3x the cost of a PS5 to get a PC powerful enough to run them. But some of these indie games like Stray and Tchia feel like a stretch.